Today, there is great interest in the personalization and customization of images as a way to add value to documents. This is especially true in transactional and promotional markets, but is gaining traction in more image intensive markets such as photo finishing. In many such applications, a photorealistic result is intended, since the targeted products, e.g. calendars, include high quality photographic content. Several technologies currently exist to personalize images such as XMPie, DirectSmile, and AlphaPictures, for example.
Many of these solutions are cumbersome and complicated, requiring stock photos, sophisticated design tools, and designer input with image processing experience.
One of the main challenges in incorporating text into an image is to estimate the 3D geometric properties of the surface on which the text is to be rendered. Several of the existing tools handle the problem by presenting via a GUI a 2D text grid that can be overlaid on the image and locally warped in 2-dimensions to appear to fit onto the 3D object surface. This is however a cumbersome and time-consuming exercise, especially for complex curved surfaces Furthermore, since the grid is specified in 2-dimensions, the text cannot be moved to another location on the same surface without re-manipulating the 2D grid.
There is an unmet need in the art for convenient and easy-to-use systems and methods that facilitate inserting personalized text into an image comprising non-planar surfaces in a natural and less restrictive manner.